I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

____________________

Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

____________________

This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

And we might not break the $120 mark, considering the impending hard landing for the Chinese industrial economy (improperly termed a black swan here) and the associated reduction in demand for crude oil. We might see Dow zero before the per-barrel price of oil hits $140. Whether oil soars or China swoons, the race to the bottom is on, with 2011 looking a lot like an ugly version of 2008 for the industrial economy.

Even the vaunted killing machine known as the U.S. military, with its essentially unlimited budget for bodies and technology, cannot maintain the flow of crude oil into the country. Military and political constraints are slapping the U.S. around already, and we’ve only begun to fall off the oil-supply cliff. A bunch of those military personnel and contractors are about to find themselves stuck in unfriendly territory without so much as a bicycle or fraudulent passport to aid their escape.

The oil-price trigger on which most folks in the echo-chamber are focusing is turmoil in the Middle East, and the demise of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia certainly could accelerate a price spike. But, as I’ve pointed out before, we’re due for a spike this year even without unrest in the Middle East. That’s what declining global extraction rates (e.g., Iraq) and increasing global demand does to the price, even if our vaunted military manages to conquer Libya for its oil. Even Forbes knows what most media outlets are afraid to reveal: Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil, has no spare capacity.

Or maybe this time is different, and a spike in the price of oil won’t bring the industrial economy to its knees. The ever-clueless cabal of economists at The Economist suggest an oil shock this year will transform the world economy. I agree about the transformation, though not in the direction they think.

In response to the good news about skyrocketing oil prices, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency finds itself in an uncomfortable position. Seems one of their spooks killed a couple of the wrong people in Pakistan, and subsequently was found with embarrassing documents in his possession. The documents indicate we’re trying to “ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West’s hegemony over a Global economy that is (sic) warned is just months away from collapse.” So the best measure we can come up with, in terms of preventing collapse of the world’s industrial economy, is to provoke global nuclear war? That’ll almost certainly slow the warming of the planet, but I’m still unconvinced it’s a good idea. Talk about curing the disease by killing the patient.

Although western pundits have completely misjudged the situation in Saudi Arabia, a big war hovers even without meltdown of the kingdom. So predicts noted trends forecaster Gerald Celente , financier Marc Faber, and former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner. World War III would be quite a sequel to the final Super Bowl.

That big war might take American minds off the ongoing global insurrection, which otherwise is coming to the United States, in part because of our capitalism-for-the-poor, socialism-for-the-rich political system (also see this analysis at Zero Hedge). Alas, that’s one of the many consequences of expensive oil and food, not to mention horrific inequities between the wealthy and the rest of us: riots.

On the other hand, we might not need the war to destroy ourselves. Ongoing nuclear issues aren’t restricted to Japan. Rather, the entire Pacific Rim is vulnerable. This is the stuff of nightmares, and it haunts my waking hours, too: a nuclear event, whether or not it results from war, and the subsequent release of radiation into the atmosphere.

As the industrialized world comes apart at the seams, I’m about done waiting for people to get it. Increasingly, it’s becoming a matter of waiting to see it get them.

Next-day update: Upon request, I submitted a brief essay to Transition Voice yesterday morning regarding the disaster in Japan. It’s on their website today.

_________________

This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

When I discuss mitigation for ecological and economic collapse, I stress the crucial role of human community. And I’m not the only one: A few students with whom I am working this semester are focusing on how to communicate in community, with full awareness where we are and where we’re headed. They have developed a blog, and I encourage your participation as we struggle to find our way in a world turned inside out.

Louisville, Kentucky public library Tuesday, 28 September 2010

Audio file (special thanks to Nate Pederson for recording and archiving the presentation — may he attract the attention of the government as a result)

Powerpoint (pdf)

International Bioenergy Days 2010 presentation Monday, 27 September 2010

Powerpoint (pdf)

A line from Hunter S Thompson comes to mind: “I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

The single best word I can come up with to describe the response to my actions: sad. That the self-proclaimed intellectual elite in this country find simply unfathomable the decision to pursue morality over money is as sad as the wise ape finding itself in the midst of two dire fossil-fuel predicaments.

The moral imperative associated with abandoning imperial pursuits hasn’t caught on yet among my ivory-tower colleagues. Although this makes me sad, it comes as no surprise to me: In my experience, university administrators reward unethical behavior and punish people for acting ethically. Reflecting culture, universities are structured to generate financial wealth for those at the top of the pyramid.

Indeed, this propensity for the easy and hence immoral life, underlain by evolution, likely is the primary contributor to both fossil-fuel predicaments. We have trapped ourselves in civilization, thus in the cities. The results likely will be catastrophic for industrial humans, as they have been and continue to be for non-industrial humans and non-human species. After all, you know the line about the root of all evil, and you also know how Ponzi schemes turn out.

On the topic of Ponzi schemes, consider two seemingly disparate examples. A chain letter is illegal because early adopters steal from future participants under false premises. When this same phenomenon occurs at the level of a nation, it’s not called a Ponzi scheme. In that case, the relevant term is “good monetary policy.”

Let’s ignore for a moment the collapse of my ego and contemplate the other collapses, with my usual focus on the environment and the industrial economy. As I’ve suggested previously, if you think the latter is more important than the former, try holding your breath while counting your money.

On the topic of environmental devastation — the one that really matters, if we’re to avoid our own extinction — we have the federal government is hindering investigations in the Gulf of Mexico, even going so far as to crack down on science and scientists under the guise of homeland security and intimidate scientists who might reveal the truth. We wouldn’t want American citizens to know about massive fish kills. I suppose that’s better than ordering the assassination of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, as the Obama administration now claims as a right of the executive branch. Consistent with governmental lies willingly ignored by the media, the feds refuse to investigate the events of 11 September 2001, the so-called date of infamy characterized by the mother of all coincidences.

The federal government’s response to citizen outrage is to quell the outrage and continue rewarding the companies driving it. Consider, for example, the Orwellian U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracking people who protest energy companies, then sending the data to the energy companies. Apparently my tax dollars are being put to good use: spying on fellow citizens to benefit Big Oil.

Bread and circuses aside, we’re on the verge of an international food crisis. In other cultures, food and water are free. In this culture, the financially wealthy are further enriched because we place our food and water under lock and key, and the key is given to the rich. Coincident with locking up the food, we’re also on the verge of an unprecedented dose of austerity plunging the planet into new financial, monetary, economic and social chaos.

Global climate change stands as a fine example of environmental collapse. On that front, climate scientists continue to equivocate, giving Glenn Beck and his ilk every opportunity further confuse a country filled with environmentally illiterate citizens consumers. It doesn’t help that the all-star of the climate-change “movement” is Bill McKibben, who believes real reform lies in solar panels and wishing Barack Obama will take meaningful political action. But Obama know we’re running out of the lifeblood of civilization, so he’ll use any means necessary to secure black gold. Without cheap oil, as I’ve pointed out innumerable times, we cannot experience economic growth. Even Shell Oil admits we’re headed for an oil shock, although they put the timing far enough into the future than nobody will actually care. And please remember the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate: Energy efficiency and conservation cannot be used to solve this particular predicament

Further into the subject of environmental destruction, with a tad of human brutality thrown in, the Toronto Sun reveals what any sentient person already know about Afghanistan: It’s a worsening imperial disaster that threatens to take America into the abyss. Iraq might do the trick first, even without “combat” troops there (the non-combat troops look a lot like combat troops, though). Sandwiched between those two countries, Iran is beating the drums of war.

In short, the U.S. has lost control of its own destiny. That’s what the undulating plateau of oil extraction will do for a country wholly dependent on ready access to cheap oil. Even data provided by BP acknowledge we’ve passed the world oil peak, with no appreciable increase in extraction since 1998. Small wonder the industrial economy has suffered a lost decade, and is headed for Dow 2000 and the biggest bear market in three centuries.

Meanwhile, as if there remained any doubt, neoclassical economists have proven themselves uniformly worthless. Needless to say, American politicians, media outlets, and citizens continue to worship them, which is completely consistent with our inability to process reality.

After all, the recession is over. According to the economists, it ended in June 2009. I’m sure the boys at the unemployment office will be pleased to hear it. Lest you think it’s time to buy stocks, that particular market is stunningly overpriced, which helps explain why insiders are selling at 290 times the rate they are buying. According to Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s sidekick at Berkshire Hathaway, all you un- and under-employed losers need to suck it in. Yes, this is the same ultra-wealthy Munger who last week assured us there’d be more economic pain to come (though undoubtedly not for him) and seven months ago told us, with respect to the industrial economy, basically, it’s over.

Nietzsche’s maxim comes to mind: “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” For me, here and now, it’s a race for my physical body, with the outcome seriously in doubt. For the living planet, the race is vastly more important, and the stakes couldn’t be higher: Can we pop the balloon called the industrial economy before it kills the remainder of living planet? How much longer will we trade food for fuel, imperial luxury today for starvation tomorrow, economic growth for a an overheated planet, and life for death?

__________________

This essay is permalinked at The Gable Grey.

Here in the homeland, we peaked in 1970 and we extract relatively little oil on land or at sea. BP’s 100-million-barrel reservoir off the coast of Alaska — er, rather, on a BP-constructed island, and therefore not offshore at all — will meet U.S. demand for less than a week. Meanwhile, long-time swing supplier Saudi Arabia is turning off the tap. So much for satiating our infinite desires with limitless oil from the Middle East. Even the International Energy Agency forecasts demand in excess of world supply.

As world oil supply has fallen, the price has exceeded $80 per barrel twice in recent history. Both events were followed shortly thereafter by sovereign-debt crises in several countries. We’ll likely cross the $80 threshold again soon, even as the industrial economy continues to nosedive. Considering the debt-related economic pain in Europe despite throwing money at the issue (i.e., papering over the economic mess), Keynesian economics makes no sense at all. The printing press hasn’t been sufficient in the U.S., either, and it’s the one-size-fits-all solution of the Obama/Bernanke team. This is the typical government approach: If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is.

I’m not suggesting the debt-based approach hasn’t been broken for a long time. But every attempt to “fix” the industrial economy represents a boondoggle atop a boondoggle, with every one destined for failure at a faster rate than the prior one. Helicopter Ben has created half the U.S. money in history within the last four years even as the money supply continues to crash. On one hand, states want more federal stimulus (i.e., keep the presses running) as the head into a second-half economic tsunami with no clue how to deal with it. On the other hand, pressure is building to stop or slow the printing presses, but it’s already too late: We cannot possibly pay off the current U.S. debt, so — from the perspective of Bernanke and Obama — there’s no point in slowing the presses now, despite ludicrous, vacuous threats from various factions of the tea party. Meanwhile, the sheeple are growing frustrated as they wonder where the jobs went and why the industrial economy remains in the abattoir. Nobody in a position of influence has the guts to tell them about energy decline and its economic consequences; even if anybody with the ear of the people were talking about it, the hyper-indulgent sheeple wouldn’t have the guts to listen, much less act on the knowledge.

Hyperinflation might be on the way, despite the crash in cash. At the very least, the near future will bring increased volatility and a host of economic woes.

The water is boiling around us and, like frogs, we’re failing to notice. Unlike frogs, we have the ability to see what’s going on, and how it’s killing us, but we prefer the culture of make believe over reality. So we pretend we’re immersed in an imperial spa. Fever? What fever? I just need another drink. Apparently the cancer of industrial culture removes cognitive capacity before it kills the host.

Continuing to pretend won’t help the dire situation on the housing front. As it turns out, housing and energy definitely are not too big to fail. Despite out best efforts to ignore reality, echoes of the Great Depression abound. As housing prices continue to decline, Americans lose the ability to use their homes as ATMs. As oil prices continue to increase, aftershocks continue to rumble through the system, with more quakes on the way.

And it’s not just housing and oil. The collapse in commercial real estate is fully under way, banks are withholding information from the federal government because they dare not open their books in the light of day, another credit crunch lies right out the corner because nothing about the financial system has changed since the last crisis of confidence, and bond vigilantes are coming to America and therefore to the world’s reserve currency.

Plenty of people here in the empire think there are alternatives to oil, thus failing to distinguish derivatives from alternatives. These derivatives will never pay their way, of course, much less serve as anything resembling a comprehensive substitute to crude oil. And without abundant liquid fuels, we cannot grow the industrial economy.

Other folks believe hydropower will keep the lights on in their neighborhood, without working through the consequences of capitulation of the stock markets. Why would the engineers and technicians keep showing up to run the electrical plant if they aren’t getting paid, either because all the banks fail or their employer’s stock is worthless?

Too little, too late, Bill Gates is urging us to spend billions on an energy revolution. But he’s not spending his billions on it, probably because he knows the fossil-fuel party is over.

As a result of running out of inexpensive oil on the way to passing the world oil peak in 2005, we witnessed an oil shock in 2008 that nearly brought the industrial economy screeching to a halt. Chief Executive Officer of insurance giant Lloyds warns of another price spike headed our way, and I cannot imagine the industrial machine of planetary death surviving oil priced at the expected $200 per barrel.

Source: EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2009

But I’m an optimist, as I’ve pointed out before. I think we can terminate the industrial economy before we move the assault from the Gulf on our southern border to the wholesale destruction of interior lands on our northern border even as it becomes increasingly clear the tar sands will not meet expectations. The events in the Gulf of Mexico illustrate an important point: As my detractors have been saying for years, we really are awash in a sea of oil. Are you happy now?

The disaster in the Gulf provides a perfect opportunity for the dead hand of Ronald Reagan to rise in the form of judicial activism. This pattern is blatantly apparent in the Supreme Court and all lower courts and is consistent with the notion that the right-wing thought police have taken over this country.

In support of my omnipresent optimism, historian Niall Ferguson has added his voice to the large and growing chorus predicting the collapse of U.S. empire by the end of 2012. If we cease to kill the industrial economy, it will continue to kill the living planet and all of us who depend upon it. Either way — with imperial collapse or reduction of Earth to a lifeless pile of rubble — we can stop worrying about power politics. As should be evident to any reader by now, I prefer a robustly living planet over a dying or dead one. As should be equally apparent to any sentient being, I don’t have much company on this particular point.

The economic endgame is rearing its head. The stock markets are headed down — way down — with a monster shock headed their way. One plausible scenario has collapse of the bond market following collapse of the stock markets. But at Dow zero, you’ll be a lot more worried about feeding your children than the rate of return on your bonds.

Meanwhile, out in the dying murdered Gulf of Mexico, BP has claimed success. Calls for a boycott will fade away and clueless Americans will continue to display an inordinate capacity for cognitive dissonance as they continue to demand abundant cheap oil even while throwing the occasional tantrum at Exxon-Mobile BP corporations providing our drug of choice. You might go so far as to call this yet another example of American psychosis.

Will human life be wiped out by events in the Gulf of Mexico? In a word, no. We’re taking quite an impressive toll on the entire planet, but destroying our entire species with only the tools we’ve developed during the last two centuries will take more than a few years, our vaunted technological prowess notwithstanding. The Titanic of ecological overshoot has crashed into the iceberg of limited oil, leading to a painfully slow descent of the industrial economy. The descent is painful because it allows us to keep the current game going, re-arranging the deck chairs as we head straight for a rapid decline in the human population in the wake of a devastated Earth.

There is a better way. We know what it is. It’s time to give up our childish dreams and act like responsible adults. Is that too much to ask?

Of course, had stock traders known the dire nature of AIG, for an easy example, the economy would have completed its ongoing collapse long ago. Fortunately, Americans prefer presidents and presidential candidates who lie about the likes of AIG (and, as nearly as I can distinguish, everything else).

But back to the smoke-and-mirrors recovery. It’s fizzling out and there is worse to come. The Wall Street Journal predicts collapse will come in 2011. Over on CNBC, the recommendation is to buy barbed wire as the endpoint of devaluation appears. Others prefer a different phrase: the next step down, also known as a dead end. If you’re a part of Saudi Arabia’s royal family — welcome to the blog, by the way, and feel free to post a comment — it’s time to get out before the apocalypse comes to the kingdom.

For the imperialist-in-charge, what to do, what to do? Now that the Keynesian approach has about run its course, Obama is set to re-open offshore drilling program in a feeble attempt to keep the current game going. And there’s undoubtedly more stimulus headed our way, even though we already passed the point of debt saturation: each new dollar of federal debt now subtracts 45 cents from GDP.

If you’re having a tough time swallowing the notion that the economy can go from apparent recovery to the toilet in a few years, remember what most people believed in 1930: they thought the bad economic news was behind them, too. It’s looking a lot like 1930.

Even usually clueless Americans are getting nervous about the economy — apparently they’re no longer watching television. But even the ever-soothing voices on the tube are pointing out that the gusher in the Gulf is getting worse by the day, with economic implications bound to bury the coast for decades. The BP spill is probably gushing on the order of 100,000 barrels per day, not the 70,000 bpd reported by BP, a number that keeps going up as they keep repairing the problem. The spill certainly exceeds estimates by ultraconservative marine scientists.

But even the latter scientists agree about the existence of the undersea plume (or cloud). I am definitely not applying the “scientist” label to anybody working for the Obama administration: those former scientists gave up their integrity card when they started lying in the name of political fortune. Their new jobs are to hide the facts, not reveal them.

Despite the ongoing game of obfuscation, striking similarities have emerged between the financial collapse of 2008-2009 and the Gulf disaster. Among other characteristics, BP is paralleling the actions of the big banks, aided by the Obama administration, in covering up the truth. It comes as no surprise that BP CEO Tony Hayward has racked up a “greatest hits” list of quotes only a politician’s mother could love.

Energy analyst Matt Simmons predicts BP will declare bankruptcy within a month. That would be one way to escape paying for damages. The more likely approach, in my opinion, is a full-scale bailout by you and me. That route is already wending its way through Congress, although GOP House leader John Boehner is shying away from the idea he proposed earlier.

In a stunning bit of good news — in the category of throwing us a bone — BP finally released the list of toxins in the dispersants. Now that I’ve seen the list, though, I’m not particularly happy about it.

Finally, a single article from the mainstream points out that maybe we should re-think our oil-drenched lifestyles. Oil drilling threatens our future, as even the BBC has determined. Will that be enough to get us off the devil’s excrement? Certainly not if Barack Obama or the politicians in Louisiana have their way.

_______________

This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin and Island Breath.

The financial sector has been largely nationalized, with the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for trillions of dollars of bad loans made by big banks. Back in February 2009 our national debt was a mere $10.5 trillion, but it already exceeded the value of all the currency in the world and all the gold ever mined. Those were the good old days. Now our national debt exceeds $13 trillion (with more than $8 trillion still hidden from view), and the empire will go down like a tub full of gold bricks if we stop fanning the flames by slowing the printing press.

By running the printing presses at full speed, we are inflating the most massive bubble yet. We’ve seen how those bubbles pan out for the industrial economy. If we build them, the pin-pricks will come. Can we create another financial crisis? Of course. After all, a smoke-and-mirrors economic recovery is no protection against a crash in the equities markets. The peak in industrial economic growth is already here, with about ten thousand swords out there vying for attention to burst the bubbles of Treasuries, the U.S. big banks, China’s economic growth, the re-inflated housing market, and a renewed credit crisis. Oh, and of course the interaction between these myriad factors. In summary, the countdown is well under way for completion of the ongoing U.S. economic collapse, and there’s simply no way to soften the blow when we plunge to the bottom of the economic heap. The U.S. has the world’s biggest industrial economy, and the bigger they are, … well, you know.

The one-size-fits-all solution of printing money is leading inevitably to hyperinflation, even as the U.S. money supply dwindles. Think Zimbabwe, but with U.S. dollars. And the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. All signs still point to a major crash in stock markets (see here and here, too, among a kajillion other sites). At this point in the post-peak oil era, it’s clear to anybody paying the slightest attention we’re headed for full spectrum collapse.

How will it end, and when? It seems completion of the U.S. economic collapse will follow on the heels of Europe, which is cheering for its own demise even as all the PIIGS drown in a sea of debt. This is supremely good news, of course, for the dozen or so people who care about non-industrial cultures and the living planet: Our little reign of terror is just about over. We’re an empty garbage can, playing power games enabled by the hologram-like appearance of power.

I’ve no doubt the empire will fail to go silently into the night. Instead, we’ll take out individuals and countries with every lethal weapon in our power, including weapons most of us don’t even know about and people we don’t care about. Iran apocalypse? Could be — talk about mutually assured destruction — and soon. How soon?

Your guess is as good as mine. But is it as good as the 25 leading trends forecasters, who agree that 2010 could be the year? Hedge funder Hugh Hendry provides a concise summary: “I would recommend you panic.”

As much as I appreciation the concision of Hendry’s recommendation, I would recommend you prepare and celebrate. I’ve been recommending the former for several years, while pointing out the good news associated with economic collapse. I have more company now than I’ve had for a while: Economic collapse has gone mainstream, and the occasional worthwhile ecologist is joining Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen in recognizing and spreading the good news.

Even as the gusher in the Gulf gets much worse by the day (thus diverting our attention from BP’s other large spill), even as Barack Obama tries to use the disaster to push his ill-founded political agenda, even as the cozy relationship between BP and the Obama administration becomes clear, so too do U.S. political policies keep steering straight at the iceberg of economic and environmental collapse. As the industrial economy stumbles along, the world’s biological diversity continues to suffer even as we peer into the abyss of extinction for many of the world’s species (including, ultimately, our own).

Where should you be when economic collapse comes to your house? Michael Ruppert and his protégé Rice Farmer suggest staying where you’re most comfortable. Much as I appreciate their efforts to inform and engage economic collapse, this advice seems immoral and short-sighted to me. First, it’s the comfort of city living that got us into this civilized mess to begin with, and it’s exactly this comfort that requires obedience at home and oppression abroad. Second, today’s comfortable urban existence might not be so damned comfortable when the lights go out and the water stops coming out the taps. Rice Farmer points out that people in rural areas will “have to cope with hordes of desperate, starving city people who try to steal our food. Unless you are in a really remote location, expect hungry visitors.”

Good point. But why do you think those “hordes of desperate, starving city people” are bound to be desperate and starving? Why do you think they’ll be leaving the cities in hordes? I’d guess it’ll be because they’ll become suddenly and profoundly uncomfortable when the grocery stores run out of food and the water stops coming out the taps. If you think you’ll be comfortable surrounded by a few thousand desperate, starving city people when TSHTF in your backyard, by all means stay in your comfort zone. On the other hand, if you don’t think that’s going to work out well for you, I’d recommend skedaddling out of the city before the real rush gets under way. When will that be?

In this case, “better late than never” is the wrong answer. The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry. The time for securing your water and food is now, before the industrial economy burns itself out. You and I didn’t start the fire of empire. But we’re about to see it extinguished.

_________________

This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

As adults know, hope is for little kids and tooth fairies.

Today’s panic-infused stock-market crash was an ode to days economists thought long gone. But those economists continue to be stunned at every substantive event, as if passing the world oil peak couldn’t be expected to generate any economic consequences.

“High prices will cause the market to generate substitutes,” they cry. I guess we can expect a comprehensive substitute for crude oil to show up any day now. Or perhaps these long-predicted swings in the price of oil will continue to destroy capital and therefore lead to one canceled alt-energy project after another.

I suspect we’re back on the stock-market rollercoaster with a general trend down. Probably way down, by year’s end. But the crash that completes the collapse of American Empire could come any day, and today was a near miss after a six-month series of near misses came to a halt last March. The Dow lost about a thousand ticks today in a 15-minute span before the plunge protection team (PPT) took quick action to save the imperial day.

Oh, wait, there’s no PPT. It wouldn’t be completely legal for the federal government to buy stocks in the beloved free market, would it? And certainly not when the mantra is hope change transparency. I guess those traders just came to their senses and regained confidence in the markets. Lucky thing, too, from the imperial perspective: Another hour without intervention from the PPT and we’d be looking out over the smoldering ashes of the industrial economy this time next week.

If all goes well, the U.S. will be forced into hyperinflation or default even before the next oil-price shock brings down the industrial economy. If we’re really in the midst of the empire’s last dance, soon enough we won’t be forced to choke down lines such as these:

“There’s more war in America’s future — a great deal more, judging by the Obama Administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months”

“U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study”

“The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter”

“Scientists and environmentalists from around the world assessed the state of global biodiversity and found that it has been in steady decline”

“An American Chernobyl”

And so it goes, headline after headline, until the process of killing the planet to transfer money from the poor to the rich finally succeeds in killing us, too. Until, if the corporatocracy running the industrial show has its way, the last human on the planet accumulates all the material wealth and celebrates gleefully with his last breath.

This story could end another way, if only we’d let it. If only we’d trade in hope wishful thinking for action, the culture of make believe for the reality of the real world, insanity for reason, the horrors of extirpation and extinction for the living planet, a dead-end road in a hellish future for the heavenly wonders of life itself.

As should be clear by now, we cannot grow the industrial economy while reducing use of energy. As a result, we cannot grow the economy while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Thus, we’re stuck in a politically untenable situation: To save the living planet, including habitat for our own species, we need to shrink the industrial economy. But the industrial economy requires growth. Recent research indicates we need to shrink the industrial economy to oblivion to save our species. In other words, what we really need is to kill the industrial economy before it kills us. And by us, I mean all of us: the entire collection of wise apes. As a society, clearly we have made our choice. But as an individual, you can choose to the contrary, with benefits for your psyche and quite possibly your survival.

Crude oil is the master material, the energy source that provides access to all others. Economic growth requires ever-increasing supplies of crude oil. As availability of oil declines the price goes up (with considerable variability, as we have observed during five years since we passed the world oil peak) and the industrial economy starts to sputter. When the price gets high enough, long enough, the economy simply, finally, expires. The world has been on an undulating plateau of oil availability for several years, but that plateau leads to a cliff. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Command, the cliff comes in 8 months or so.

I know no energy-literate person who thinks we’ll be able to avoid the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025. Assuming a conservative 4% annual decline rate of crude oil between now and then indicates we will have access to the same amount of oil in 2025 as we did in 1970, when the planet held half as many people as it now does and the world was considerably less industrialized than it now is. And that’s merely the gross rate of decline, whereas the net rate of decline will be much more rapid because it takes so much energy to extract and deliver energy. Oil priced a $147.27 per barrel nearly brought down the industrial economy five times I know about, and we’re hardly out of the woods yet. There is little hope for the industrial era to persist more than a few years, and the next spike in the price of oil could very well be the trigger that brings the industrial era to a sudden close in an unprepared nation.

I suspect we’ll pass through a new Dark Age en route to the post-industrial Stone Age. Indeed, many countries in the world are already there because they lack the world’s reserve currency and the world’s largest military. Bully for us: We have both, thus ensuring a steady supply of fossil-fuel-driven energy into every city and town in the United States. Well, so far.

As an aside, how long do you think we can maintain a military and a functioning industrial economy if we keep spending 58% of our budget on the former? We could stop our involvement in wars, but that would be quite un-American, wouldn’t it?

The costs of maintaining the non-negotiable American way of life are huge, even beyond simple economics. The American suburbs are the antithesis of durable living, as they require us to live far from work, far from play, and far from the places we shop for disposable items in our throw-away culture. They require obedience at home and oppression abroad. American Empire is city living (i.e., civilized), writ large.

The relatively few people paying attention to the undercurrents of the industrial economy know the ship is taking on water faster than the governments can run the printing presses. As the industrial economy continues to lurch and stumble, the vaunted American consumer loses the ability to consume (in part because inflation is rampant on items that actually matter, notably including food). Because ours is a consumer culture, with personal consumption accounting for 70% of the industrial economy, the ship is listing. The next financial crisis is already unfolding — notwithstanding absurd reports from politicians, media, and the irrational exuberance, again, in the stock markets — and governments have nearly exhausted their supply of tools to deal with economic issues. We hit the iceberg of peak oil and, as government administrators busily rearrange the deck chairs, it’s time to launch the lifeboats, even if you believe consumption is a good thing. Personally, I think it’s not, in part based on the definition:

Consume:

1. To do away with completely; destroy

2a. To spend wastefully; squander
2b. Use up

3. To waste or burn away; perish

Consuming gives most people a temporary emotional “high.” We’re addicted to shopping. But I trust it’s clear why rational people want no part of the consumer economy. If we cannot terminate the industrial economy, and soon, we’ll exhaust all habitat for humans on Earth by the end of this century (and, if the models are to be believed, much sooner). Along the way, if we have our way, we’ll destroy every non-industrial culture and every non-human species.

In the face of a contracting industrial economy and the knowledge we’re headed for a situation with extremely limited access to fossil fuels, a quote from Peter Drucker comes to mind: “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”

What’s an individual to do, in light of the imminent collapse of western civilization? In addition to hastening the collapse, some tools for which I’ve listed before, I describe four points along a continuum for your own, individual, post-carbon future: (1) transition towns, (2) agricultural anarchy, (3) hunting and gathering, and (4) traveling. I will describe each approach, briefly, as a means of generating thought, action, and perhaps even discussion.

Transition towns allow us the fantasy of keeping the current omnicidal culture going, albeit in slightly different form. This model assumes a long descent that allows time for cities to develop alternative energy sources. Think solar on every rooftop, for starters, and gardens in every suburban lot. For this approach to work, though, the food shed must be sufficiently nearby and sufficiently productive to support all the people in the transition town. This seems hugely problematic in sprawling western cities, especially those with more than a few thousand people. And for areas with limited supplies of water, or water that is several hundred feet below the surface of the ground, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that doesn’t include massive suffering along the way to a huge die-off. The inability to store energy in the absence of fossil fuels beyond a few years in expensive, transient, and toxic batteries is a microscopic problem relative to the absence of ready access to water and food. And there’s an additional problem with the transition-town notion: I seriously doubt we have access to the fossil fuels needed to create the needed infrastructure for the 250 million city-living Americans, much less the 3.5 billion people who occupy the world’s cities. Solar panels and batteries simply won’t make the grade — there’s not enough oil left to pull this one off.

When the lights go out in the city, chaos often erupts. Is your city different? If so, will that difference persist when the lights don’t come back on, ever? I’ve often said and written that I would give my life to terminate the industrial economy, if only to alleviate the burden of oppression on the living world. I’ve no doubt, in fact, that I will make this sacrifice. And that’s okay: My insignificant life pales in contrast to the living planet and the persistence of our species. On the other hand, although I loved city life, my city was not worth dying for. So I left to prepare, recognizing that fortune favors the prepared. In contrast, Michael Ruppert moved to his home city of Los Angeles with full knowledge L.A. would be among the first cities to go up in flames. Ruppert is willing to die for the privilege of comforting the afflicted there.

Agricultural anarchy was offered as a model by Thomas Jefferson, and Monticello was the prime example before it became a museum. Contemporary examples are found in nearly every “third-world” country. A large proportion of the towns and cities in Central America and South America never have had ready access to abundant fossil fuels. As a result, communities have communal water sources and people dig shallow wells and harvest rain from rooftops. On a daily basis, local markets are filled with fresh food brought from nearby gardens and farms. The power goes out frequently, and nobody seems to mind because the towns and cities are actually located in livable areas in the absence of fossil fuels to heat or cool every building (cf. Tucson, Arizona). In short, agriculture has always been, and still is, at the center of everyday life.

Hunting and gathering will doubtless make a comeback for a very few hardy, quick-witted folks. This model resembles the prior Stone Age, and clearly is the most durable approach. It worked for the first 2 million years of the human experience, and we fled from it as recently as a few thousand years ago. But if you can’t find a tribe to go along, you’ll be as lonely as a Saguaro cactus on an ice floe.

Finally, individuals can largely avoid the ravages of collapse by traveling from spot to spot. History has been kind to travelers because people rooted in a particular place hunger for knowledge. If you’re to pursue this route, you’ll need to be quick-witted, good-humored, and willing to lend a hand when needed. Also, you’ll need to recognize and avoid danger. Traveling will be terrifying, but no worse than staying in one location. And you’ll get to see the world and live an adventure-filled life, just as promised by U.S. military recruiters.

None of these options offer a life similar to the one you’ve known. But a different life doesn’t mean a worse life, especially if you give a rat’s backside about anybody besides yourself. There will be plenty of opportunities to serve your community, as there has always been, in the months and years ahead. We’ll be living closer to our neighbors and closer to the living planet that sustains us all. For those courageous, compassionate, and creative souls willing to live in the world rather than in a cubicle, life’s about to get even more interesting. For the vast majority of industrial Americans, though, life is about to become miserable and surprisingly short.

_______________

This essay was inspired by a comment from Danielle Charbonneau. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Island Breath, and A Climate for Change.

How does one know what to believe, and who to trust? We’re surrounded by lies. During our finest moments, we don’t believe the media, the politicians we elect (from the very small slate of candidates selected for us), or the CEOs and NGOs to whom we give our money. Awash in misinformation yet surrounded by culture’s unrepentant, never-ending message, we vacillate between cynicism and swimming in the powerful current of culture.

Although the happy-talk Obama administration — and its proxy and partner in crime, the mainstream media — would have you believe the industrial economy has recovered, many signs indicate the impacts of the last oil price spike haven’t been fully worked out. The U.S. national debt rises every day, and it already exceeds the value of all currency ever produced and all gold ever mined. It cannot be paid off. Ever. If the notion of a Soviet-style default doesn’t give you pause, consider still-rising foreclosure rates, still-falling home prices, massive unemployment, financial bankruptcy at all levels of government, ballooning entitlement programs, and collapsing pension programs. This is merely the short list of economic issues we face. Needless to say, every single one of them is a profound surprise to the vast majority of neoclassical economists, few of whom saw this economic recession coming (as if passing the world oil peak didn’t provide sufficient warning, well in advance).

Knowing culture will lead us astray, we nonetheless invite scorn when we seek the truth beneath the cultural current of the main stream. Culture does not have answers to meaningful questions. But skepticism for the sake of skepticism is no virtue, either.

Applying reason as a path to knowledge (as I’ve suggested here and here, for example) is easy enough in theory. But in practice, it’s difficult to extract the facts and then synthesize them into a coherent message that guides the way. Much less the Way. And yet, we muddle along, individually and societally, relying on some inexplicable combination of faith and rational thought. For me, the guides include data (recognizing they are undoubtedly massaged before general release), historical anecdotes (ditto), my own dubious moral compass (shaped, necessarily, by culture), and an informed set of predictions from a variety of scholars. As with any gestalt, mine is formed from parts that don’t quite add up to the whole.

So how do we go from this list of economic issues to the notion of economic collapse? I’ve moved from imperialist city educator to economic doomer rural sharecropper in one (damned difficult) step. This move was driven by many factors, including the profound (and profoundly late) realization that we live immorally, buying and selling nature’s bounty at an imperialist whim. Another contributing factor was my strongly held suspicion that we’re headed for a collapse of the industrial economy by the end of 2012. If the industrial age does not end soon, we’re headed for the complete absence of habitat for humans on Earth. Obviously, there is plenty of disagreement with me on both points, and I’ve been asked to make my case. What tea leaves do I read?

I restrict this essay to economic collapse, thus leaving the issue of environmental collapse to previous posts (and perhaps future ones). The data on collapse are clearer than the rest of my guides, so I’ll start with them.

The data interact with other elements: History indicates 10 of 11 recessions since World War II and all 6 recessions since 1972 were preceded by a spike in the price of oil. The lifeblood of civilization, and its price, dictates the direction of the industrial economy. At some point, the price of oil becomes too great to maintain the industrial economy. In fact, a per-barrel price of $147.27 nearly brought the industrial economy grinding to a halt. Only massive, and massively illegal, intervention by the executive branch of the U.S. government kept the lights on in your grid-tied house, the trucks coming to the grocery store, and water coming out the taps. These actions have been written about widely. A quick search on “plunge protection team” is a nice starting point, although the issue is far broader than even omniscient Google reveals.

For information about oil supplies, I rely on Hubbert’s model and data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA). Hubbert’s model indicates we passed the world peak for crude oil in December 2005. Data from the EIA indicate peak month was May 2005. Because the industrial economy is barely limping along today, in far direr condition than when the price of oil exceeded $140, I doubt it will take a second round of $140 oil to bring the industrial age to its overdue close. Several forecasters suggest we’re headed beyond that mark with a year or so.

A little more from history: Empires fall. All of ‘em, so far. Some fall slowly, others rapidly. Some fall with a modicum of grace, others with extreme violence. American Empire is so complex, so dependent on finite materials, and intricately connected with the entire global economy that it’s difficult for me to foresee a long, peaceful decline.

The industrial economy relies heavily on crude oil, and particularly inexpensive oil. We’re perfectly willing to spend $400/gallon for gasoline to support our imperial ambitions in Afghanistan if that’s what it takes to keep the price of oil at a reasonable level for us exceptional Americans. (How exceptional? Check the charts in this essay.) But when the price of gasoline exceeds $4/gallon in the heartland, there’s trouble brewing for our all-important economic growth.

In addition to the near-term price of oil, our empire is threatened by the ever-tightening grip of globalization, which ensures that economic collapse in any of the world’s large economies will lead, domino-like, to economic collapse throughout the industrialized world. This grip was allowed and facilitated by cheap oil, and it’s no coincidence that the end of the cheap-oil era resulted in financial crises throughout the civilized world. Today, Greece is the word. But Portugal, Spain, and Japan hover on the brink (Japan is the world’s second-largest economy). So does the U.S. and the remainder of the industrialized world, though you’d never know it based on mainstream media reports from this country. We have the advantages of the world’s reserve currency and the largest killing force in the history of the world (and the willingness to use it, everywhere, all the time). But when China stops buying U.S. Treasury notes, a process already under way, the de facto rate of interest will rise, taking us inexorably and likely quickly into the land of hyper-inflation. At this late juncture in the industrial era, the only questions of great significance are whether our bubble will pop before China’s, and which of myriad potential events will serve as the proximate cause to the end of American Empire. The price of oil was a trigger event, and it might be again. But it might not, too.

As far as my moral compass is concerned, I’ve written plenty about that. There’s no need to pummel the deceased equine yet again. Check the archives, if you’re interested. Or, for a different take on the situation, read this.

So much for the models, data, history, and my sense of morality. What about those voices I hear words I read?

When I open my browser to start the day, several tabs reveal themselves. Some of these websites give the facts, as accurately as they can be determined: Bloomberg energy prices, American stock markets, and the U.S. national debt clock. Others are information clearing houses with occasional original essays, notably including the sites of Matt Savinar, Mike Ruppert, Rice Farmer, and Chris Martenson, along with Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, and The Oil Drum. Others provide synthesis and analysis: Business Insider, Baseline Scenario, Dmitry Orlov’s blog, Speak Truth to Power, Economic Collapse Blog, The Automatic Earth, and Zero Hedge. Finally, one tells me what people are thinking out there in the culture of make believe: MSNBC. Needless to say, that’s the scary one.

I’m not foolish enough to read every article, much less read every article linked from these pages. But there is plenty of fodder here, much of it informed by biophysical economics. Biophysical economists, unlike neoclassical economists, know about finite materials. As a result, the former know starvation can kill people. Any self-respecting neoclassical economist assumes the rumbling of his stomach will cause food to appear.

Now let’s pause for a quick story about neoclassical economists.

Four shipwrecked economists wash ashore on a deserted tropical island. The first Asian economist says, “I’ll gather wood and start a fire to keep us warm and cook our food.” The second Asian economists says, “I’ll find water.” The third Asian economist says, “I’ll find food.” The American economist sits down, smiles, and says, “When you’ve got that all taken care of, I’ll consume whatever you produce. You’re darned lucky I’m here: Without me, the entire system falls apart in a hurry.”

Note that confidence among U.S. consumers fell in April. Unexpectedly, of course.

We now return to our regularly scheduled essay.

Among the places these links lead are the following. This summer’s hurricane season likely will contribute to high oil prices. And we might not need the hurricanes: According to the International Energy Agency, world oil demand will set an all-time record this year, exceeding the amount actually being sucked out of the ground by 2.4 million barrels per day. The global financial system is primed and ready to implode. The Fed admits to breaking the law in the name of transferring wealth (and not to me or you). And the Fed, like the U.S., is bankrupt. That alone will cause hyperinflation. “Real estate built America, and it’s going to take it down. Foreclosures will be the wrecking ball for the American economy.” The economic crisis in Greece is just getting started. Recent reports of economic growth are mere mirages from the smoke-and-mirrors cabal behind the curtain (duh). More than half your tax dollars support the military (yeah, that’s sustainable; even an increasing percentage of military personnel is questioning whether they will accomplish their amorphous mission in Afghanistan). Warren Buffett bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, calling it an “all-in bet” on the U.S. economy, as if he’d been reading the work of James Howard Kunstler. Buffett’s partner Charles Munger wrote a parable transparently about the U.S. economy titled, “Basically, it’s over.” A large European bank warned its clients about completion of the ongoing collapse by the end of 2011. The U.S. dollar will collapse, causing world economic collapse, by 2012. Catherine Austin Fitts moved from New York City to rural Tennessee to build a doomstead. As should be obvious, “from now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising” (pdf file). And so on. The evidence mounts daily, and it all points in the same direction.

My interpretation and synthesis of these many essays and the data on which they rely suggests the industrial age is near its terminus. How near? Recognizing the difficulty of predictions, and the animus they elicit, I’ll go out on the often-wrong limb of forecast and give us a 99% chance of “lights out in the empire” by 21 December 2012. And I didn’t even look at my Mayan calendar.

Reinhart and Rogoff’s 2009 book, This Time is Different, describes financial crises in 66 nations dating to the 13th century. For a change, I agree with the rallying cry of people subject to previous collapses: This time is different. This time it’s not one of 66 nations. It’s every country in the entire industrial world. Indeed, this time is different.

In short, civilization is only a few days removed from chaos or, if you’re an optimist like me, from anarchy. This has always been the case, for every failed civilization as well as the one left standing. With every passing day, we move further into ecological overshoot and also closer to the end of western civilization and its apex, the industrial economy. For most individual industrial humans, the end will not be welcome. But for the living planet on which we depend, and therefore our very species, the end of industry will bring a welcome relief from decades of oppression. It might even give us back our humanity while granting our species a few more decades of planetary existence.
___________

This essay was inspired by a comment from Marguerite Daisy. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Bluegrass reVisions, and Island Breath.